Martina Fidanza, gold in cycling, art and heart surgery – Corriere.it

«I don’t believe too much in artists who create on the spur of the moment. A painting or a sculpture is the result of study, hard work, second thoughts, creative blocks, rewrites. I think about how much my fellow citizen Caravaggio worked to develop the light that illuminated his characters. When you paint, you have to erase often to improve. I never imagined how much the experience of the artistic high school would have been precious to me in cycling ». At 22 and in less than 24 hours, Martina Fidanza has become the queen of Italian sport. On the Parisian track of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines he first won his second world track title in the scratch rodeo race and then led the blue quartet of the pursuit of the first gold in history against the English, Dutch and German teachers.

Art and cycling, an unprecedented combination.
“Cycling is a family dna: dad Giovanni (winner of stages in the Giro and the Tour, ndr) and mother Nadia (Baldi, ndr) were professional cyclists, my sister Arianna still is. I started pedaling almost before walking ».

The art?
«Passion and sacrifice. Attending the artistic high school with profit was challenging, between the trips up and down from Ponte San Pietro to Bergamo, the training on the way back before dark, the drawings, the sculptures, the books and the trips since I was a young girl: I raced and won the first World Cup at the age of 16. Never asked for discounts: when you paint or train you have to give your all. And the school has helped me a lot ».

At what?
«To learn to start from scratch. When things don’t go well, in training or drawing in charcoal, we turn the page without getting distressed ».

Cycling?
“Same. Last December my heart started giving numbers: potentially dangerous arrhythmias. After a series of examinations, with Dr. Corsetti it was decided for an ablation operation. It is done under local anesthesia and when I saw the doctors with the scalpel in front of me I had a moment of dizziness. They were about to put their hands on my heart: would I be the same athlete as before? ».

How did it go?
“Well, but it didn’t last long: I immediately caught Covid, the same one that had sent Dad to the hospital. I was weakened, the blow was very strong, I could not get the vaccine booster and I feared an infection. After 40 days of hiatus, recovering was hard. Then, helping me with the pool and walks, I picked up the thread. But it wasn’t over ».

Meaning what?
«On March 16, during a race in Flanders, two colleagues fell in front of me on a downhill stretch. I couldn’t avoid them. While I was on the ground, two more fell on me. The handlebars of a bike broke two of my vertebrae. At that point the recovery was really tiring, even mentally. But I didn’t lose my patience, I started over and recovered again ».

Very good, judging by the results. Anyone who has seen her victory in scratch on TV is maddened by the tension and fear that she would fall or remain delayed.
«Same feeling that I had when I saw the race on TV. I thought: Fidanza is crazy, now she falls, now she comes off, if she stays like this behind she will never win. But in the race an automatic pilot drives me: in that bedlam I was very quiet. I raced for the first time against males at 12, I have scratching in my blood ».

The scratch is a quarter of an hour of twists and elbows, the team chase four minutes of violent fatigue.
«The gold in the quartet is the result of years of collective work. You need total affinity between companions, sensitivity to rhythm, intelligence in understanding that with your legs you are not going anywhere and you must also put yourself in those of the others, who may be less fit than you. In the end we never stopped crying: only we know what was behind that result ».

What does Martina Fidanza dream about? What’s in her future?
«I dream of Olympic gold and in my future I always see the track. I love the velodromes, their atmosphere, the noises, the penetrating smell of wood ».

How do you relax when you are not spinning in circles?
“Music, books (in my suitcase I have” The Fall of the Giants “by Ken Follet), TV series (since I was a child I have seen and reviewed the episodes of OC indefinitely) and my nails: at the moment it is on them that I vent the my artistic creativity “.